Distributing calendar and appointment information including, for example, free/busy time, scheduled meetings, public gatherings, and private parties, is problematic due to many limitations in mainstream technology. For example, calendar applications in general, and personal information managers in particular, have not been very good at distributing calendar information. With conventional systems, this problem is threefold. First, there are no official current internet standards for transporting calendar data. Second, conventional systems do not filter calendar data that is to be transmitted. For example, calendar data includes a mixture of private and non-private information, thus when transmitting calendar data, how much information conveyed needs to be controlled. Third, calendaring applications typically need a server to host shared or distributed calendar data. Accordingly, to take advantage of such features, users need to have access to a server.
Furthermore, scheduling meetings or making appointments with someone electronically has been a very difficult process using conventional systems. For example, users may give up on using conventional calendaring processes and may simply use a telephone instead to make appointments. Consequently, the problem may be twofold. First, conventional systems do not support distribution of personal calendars that can be used as schedulable entities. And second, conventional systems do not support presenting a user's calendar information in a format conducive to online scheduling.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for methods and systems for providing electronically distributed calendars more optimally. Furthermore, there is a need for providing electronically distributed calendars including, for example, filtered calendar data. Moreover, there is a need for providing calendars that are, for example, electronically schedulable.